Community dialogue
Working with technology
An artistic coherence was achieved because each person performed out of the truth of their experience, in the confidence of one another’s respect.
O Tempo (Somos Nós)
Digital technology has the power to bridge social, cultural and generational gaps, providing that it is accessible to those who use it.
Technology is a tool that can vastly enrich the artistic and social element of a project, providing you have a team with the necessary expertise to use it. Having said that, it must also be easy to understand and easy to use and will be most beneficial when introduced at the start of the process. It should not simply serve as a way to wow people in a finale.
“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
- Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
- Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
- Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
Douglas Adams
Opera exists because of the continuing evolution of technology: musical instruments, stage machinery, lighting, acoustics—the list of technologies that serve opera today is very long. As the pace of its development grows faster, there is always a temptation—especially, as Douglas Adams says, when we approach middle age—to shout ‘Enough! I have what I need, now please leave things as they are.’
The new tools we created allowed the people taking part to interact and share their experiences during the co-creation process and even perform together when miles apart. Learning if, when and how to accommodate such technologies into opera co-creation and performance is a necessary part of opening opera itself to new actors and new voices.
If you want to learn more about the tools we created, check out the technology webpage.
